Mood Machine

An unsparing investigation into Spotify's origins and influence on music, weaving unprecedented reporting with incisive cultural criticism, illuminating how streaming is reshaping music for listeners and artists alike.

Drawing on over a hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes us to the inner workings of today's highly consolidated record business, showing what has changed as music has become increasingly playlisted, personalized, and autoplayed.

Building on her years of wide-ranging reporting on streaming, music journalist Liz Pelly details the consequences of the Spotify model by examining both sides of what the company calls its two-sided marketplace: the listeners who pay with their dollars and data, and the musicians who provide the material powering it all. The music business is notoriously opaque, but here Pelly lifts the veil on major stories like streaming services filling popular playlists with low-cost stock music and the rise of new payola-like practices.

For all of the inequities exacerbated by streaming, Pelly also finds hope in chronicling the artist-led fight for better models, pointing toward what must be done collectively to revalue music and create sustainable systems. A timely exploration of a company that has become synonymous with music, Mood Machine will change the way you think about and listen to music.

'Pelly has written a groundbreaking examination of the music-streaming giant Spotify and its effects on 21st-century music. . . . A provocative, insightful, disturbing, and well-researched indictment of Spotify, the music industry, and streaming platforms, which daily mine billions of data bits from listeners/viewers to maximize profits and churn out musical formulas. Highly recommended.' -- Library Journal (starred review)
'A spirited debut. . . . Evocative prose and sharp analysis combine for a trenchant critique of the music streaming industry that calls for concrete reforms while asking bigger questions about "why universal access to music matters" and the cultural consequences of restricting its production and dissemination. The result is a perceptive assessment of the current musical landscape and an eye-opening glimpse into its possible future.' -- Publisher's Weekly
'A strong indictment to rouse consumers into considering just where our commitment to music is headed.' -- Kirkus Reviews
'The most important book about the music business in decades, a devastating indictment of its dominant digital platform, an urgent call to action for music lovers. Written crisply and reported bravely, Mood Machine reveals just how much of our culture we've handed over to one company, and what that means. Liz Pelly, with deep empathy for artists and zero tolerance for sociopathic tech-bro babble, is concerned not only about Spotify's parsimonious compensation for performers, but about the way in which it has already distorted our very concept of what music is, and what it is for.' -- Dan Charnas, New York Times bestselling and PEN award winning author of Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, The Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm, and The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop
'Do you remember the first song you streamed? Probably no more than you remember your first breath. Streaming and its main vehicle and commodifier, the Swedish company Spotify, have become so pervasive within music culture that its origins and impact are as hard to pin down as air. Liz Pelly's impeccably reported, persuasive book colors that air with detail and clarity, diligently and insightfully chronicling the 21st-century conquest of music lovers' souls. Mood Machine exhaustively explores the many aspects of Spotify's impact, from its tricky 'pro rata' economics to the pseudoscientific therapeutics of 'chill'; Pelly picks up every piece of the streaming puzzle and places it in perfect context. This book will intrigue the lay person, inform the artist, and cause music fans to think deeply about the hidden costs of making all those playlists.' -- Ann Powers, author of Tori Amos and Traveling
'Here is the clearest and most thorough job of reporting-and-critique I've encountered on how Spotify, through a juncture of corporate interests, data science, surveillance, vibes theory, and cliché, has engineered a zombie impostor of musical culture. Liz Pelly helps you see and hear how it happened. Her work is an act of decency against degeneration.' -- Ben Ratliff, author of Every Song Ever
'Mood Machine is so much more than a book about music streaming. Liz Pelly has painted a portrait of modern capitalism through the lens of Spotify, a mega-app that manages to encompass all the ways that Big Tech is both homogenizing and alienating, dulling our senses while offering the illusion of abundance. Spotify, in Pelly's hands, is a fun house mirror-world where our musical tastes and desires are warped to fit the needs of accumulation rather than art.' -- Sarah Jaffe, author of From the Ashes and Work Won't Love You Back
'Much has been said about the somewhat tense relationship between artists, listeners and streaming. But with Mood Machine, Liz Pelly has written the definitive breakdown of Spotify and its influence on the music industry. Anyone wanting to learn more about playlisting, and to understand why they like what they like, should buy this book.' -- Marcus J. Moore, critically-acclaimed author of High and Rising (A Book About De La Soul)
'We know intuitively that our relationship with music is changing - often for the worse. But to read how and why this relationship has broken down is devastating and infuriating. Liz Pelly lands this story on a hopeful note that will galvanize those of us who dream of a different future for the music industry. I couldn't put it down.' -- Zoë Schiffer, author of Extremely Hardcore
'Recorded music has been a commodity since wax cylinders, but few writers have captured the current dizzying state of its commodification like Liz Pelly. In Mood Machine, she brings an insider's knowledge of the ways that Spotify and algorithmic recommendations have flattened our experiences as listeners, consumers, and participants in the music ecosystem. This isn't only a book about a crooked business, it's an argument for re-centering humanity in our listening habits.' -- John Lingan, author of A Song For Everyone: The Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival
'My musical career happened at the end of the previous century, when major labels simply co-opted independently-created fads to maintain industry dominance. Mood Machine gives the definitive account of what followed: Spotify, an unprecedented wealth extraction machine which flattened music into metadata and exchanged inspiration for mere engagement. Author Liz Pelly writes with a reporter's instinct, a historian's reverence, a surgeon's precision, and a punk rocker's heart. Read this book, then joyfully go forth and work against everything its subject stands for.' -- Tom Maxwell, author of Hell and A Really Strange and Wonderful Time

Liz Pelly is a writer and editor based in New York. She is at work on her first book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, to be published in 2025 by Astra House. Her byline has appeared at The Baffler, Guardian, NPR, Pioneer Works Broadcast, and many other outlets. She is an adjunct instructor at NYU Tisch.

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